CONSERVING RAINFORESTS & EMPOWERING COMMUNITIES

Pacific Forest Alliance

Pacific Forest Alliance (PFA) is a company incorporated in Papua New Guinea to assist indigenous communities to find commercial solutions to in the reduction or cessation of full scale commercial and unsustainable logging. The aim is to them assisting these communities in the development of sustainable community based social and environmental projects. These are chosen by the local landowners and their communities to help provide an improved standard of living, education and health care.

Papua New Guinea

PNG lies just south of the equator, 160km north of the Australian mainland and is part of a great arc of mountains stretching from Asia, through Indonesia and into the South Pacific. This fascinating land boasts more than 800 indigenous languages and is home to unique tropical ecosystems and biodiversity.

Papua New Guinea (PNG) has one of the most significant areas of largely-intact tropical forest in the world. Papua New Guineas’ forests are also a vital resource for the local population particularly in the remote rural areas of PNG, providing food, fibre, building materials, and support a variety of wildlife and ecosystem services.

Deforestation poses a major threat to these important forest ecosystems.

In 2002 the estimated rate of deforestation or degradation of Papua New Guinea’s forests was 1.41% per annum. Based on these rates, Shearman et al, (2008) estimated that 83% of Papua New Guinea’s forests would be lost or degraded by 2021. Greenpeace (2010) estimates that roughly half of Papua New Guinea’s forests (i.e. approximately 16.3 million ha of primary forest) is under threat of selective logging and therefore entering the cycle of degradation leading to deforestation.